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Mike Hedrick was born on the banks of the New River on the North Carolina Coast. He grew up on BBQ and Pulled Pork was some of his first solid food. After years of growing up as a country boy camping and cooking Mike began Grilling and Barbecuing. After years of cooking for family and friend Mike began his ongoing passion to make the best barbecue in the world.

In his first season on the National Barbecue Competition Circuit Mike's Pit Pirate BBQ Team had an amazing Three Top 10's and a 3rd Place Overall Pork at the National Capital Barbecue Battle on Pennsylvania Ave., Washington DC. Mike is now the proud Owner/Chef of Pit Pirate BBQ and does Catering from 50 to 500 and also Concession Sales and is currently looking for a Restaurant location.

Knowing that serving is more than food Mike organized "Operation BBQ for Our Troops: Walter Reed and collected up donations and and got other BBQ Teams to come and feed 500 of the wounded Soldiers and their Caregivers. When asked by the Assistant Secretary of Defense Health Affairs why he would go to such efforts Mike said “That sir. Seeing the smiles on their faces…the lord says to go and serve, and BBQ is just what I do.”

Mike is currently the Pit Boss and National Spokesman for Pit Crew Barbeque.

How to Make Carolina Sweet Sun Tea

Chef Mike Hedrick demonstrates how to make carolina sweet sun tea for a caribbean bbq.

Instructions

Michael Hedrick: Hey guys, Mike Hedrick, Pit Pirate BBQ. Hey, we have been munching out, we have been getting a bunch of stuff cooked up, but you got to have something to drink too. Nothing goes better with barbeque, better than a Carolina Sweet Sun Tea. You can make sun tea, you can do it on your stove, you can do whatever you want, but hey! we got old soul up there working for us already. Let us get in doing something here, everybody is talking about gas prices. Lets us get the sun to do something for us. So we are going to go ahead and use the sun to make our sweet tea.

We are going to use cold water, we use cold water instead of hot water. You can probably make it go a little bit quicker with your hot water. We are going to use cold water and then what we will be able to do with that is we are going to put our three teabags down in there. We are using cold water instead of hot water because your hot water comes out of your hot water heater, there could be minerals in there and all that kind of stuff and this is going to be a lot fresher.

So we just want to dunk that down in there, we are going to put our lid on there. We are going to set this in a nice, sunny spot here for a handful of hours and the sun is going to start working on it. It is going to get darker and darker and darker and by the end of a workday, you got some sun tea. When the water gets all warmed up and it's nice, warm tea, we are going to add in probably about a half-a-cup, to three-quarters of a cup of some nice sugar to sweeten it up, got to have sweet tea and then from that point on, let's put it together with the big meal, maybe add a little mint julep to the top of that thing and have a nice tea in the sunshine on a summer day. Well, that's how you make Carolina Sun Tea. We didn't fill it all the way to the brim because we are going to put in a bunch of ice in here so people would be able dispense right up out of there, but nice, sweet made from the sun, made with lot of love, Carolina for you guys for a caribbean bbq.